This week has been full of some madness, mayhem and cool shiz. So you know, the norm for out here. It will be a blog update of a few short stories as it were, so it jumps from story to story. Better keep up.
We had the river rise from this
The stairs were just behind me when I took the photo.
To this
Overnight.
Pretty freaking crazy. It must've been absolutely pouring rain down south in the Kanaku Mtns and then it all flowed here on its way out to sea.
This meant we had no where to be with Buddy at the first landing since there was no sandbank, which forced us to go feed him at the lagoon. Only problem was, since the water level had risen, the caiman had moved from the river, through the mangrove like trees and into the lagoon. Three of them, one particularly large one that does not respect Buddys territory, nor does he care about rocks and such being thrown at him. Problematic. So for a few days Buddys trips down at the river were rather short, especially when one morning he actually swam straight into 2 of the caiman and had a tussle. He came back fine, one little scratch and a little shaken up. Buddys otter 'friend' returned, and this time within about 10m of Buddy! Buddy however was once again completely oblivious because he was busy eating a fish. For now though it seems like this otter isn't interested in giving Buddy a beating otherwise he would've done it by now. He may just be looking for a companion.
Needless to say we didn't take the kids down for 2 days because the caiman were right there.
So we had a number of rather stressful mornings and afternoons but the water has dropped again somewhat which means the caiman seem to be less interested in hanging out in the lagoon and we can again access the sandbank at the first landing.
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We have been having overcast, humid and muggy weather for the last few days with patches of rain. Patches of rain here seems to be it goes from overcast to near torrential downpour in 2minutes. Rains furiously until you are soaked to the skin, then slows down, stops, and the sun comes out . . .
Stefi and I were down at the lagoon yesterday when such a downpour occured. Funzies.
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I've been eating lot's of new foods local to Guyana, most of which are pretty tastey. One is a fruit - a tiny little yellow apple that tastes like you are eating a thin slice of apple with a thick slice of strong blue vein cheese! Pretty cool, but can only do one or two at a time!
It is called a........Cheese Apple....not really. It does have a proper name, but I currently can't remember it...
There was a dessert two nights ago that was like a really dense cheesecake. It was made from Guava, so was a little grainy in texture wise and very very sweet. This is roughly how the following conversation went between myself and the others at the table - Diane, Pat, Salvador, Andrea and Pete.
I asked what it was made from and what it was called.
The response was Guava Cheese.
Why?
Because it's texture/density is like cheese. There is already the Guava fruit and Guava jam and this is something different again.
But it doesn't taste at all like cheese . . .
So what would you call it?
...Guava Cake...
-> laughter all round.
Well I mean really that seems pretty sensible to me haha. Ah well crazy guyanese. Pete said there is no way any Australian would call this cheese. Exactly.
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Right now I'm munching on a piece of bread and chunks of cheese I begged from Auntie Doris and Girly in the kitchen :) my heroes. I was starving.
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So Ana and I have been helping Stefi in her veterinary pursuits, which is excellent fun. We started off with the aim of getting blood from all the cats and dogs to test for rabies and distemper. They are going to be vaccinated anyway but it is important to know whether it is here or not.
Waterton and Soxy were easy as cake to get blood from, we just walked up to them, rolled them over and took blood whilst giving lots of praise and pats. They didn't even make a sound. Good boys! Old Boy was also very good, Alvin just called him outside, held him and we took it. However we don't have a chance to take it from the other 3 dogs without their owners holding them. We can't get near them - they know something is up, also even if we did manage to get a hold of one, there is too much of a risk that we would get bitten. A risk we don't need to take.
All the blood taking equipment - the razor, which incidentally was completely useless for use with animal fur haha; the needles from the syringes to take the blood (out of picture there is a special vial for collecting blood that contains a vacuum, so when it's pierced by the needle the vacuum sucks the blood into the vial - cool huh cousins?!); glass slides for making blood smears; and water for the razor (it's just water on the table too!).
Here is a fresh blood sample - Old Boys if I remember correctly and blood slides from Old Boy and Waterton.
One morning late last week we woke up to find that Waterton had come back from a romp on the savannah with a huge gash on the his left 'shin'.
So Stefi got to get her vet on for the first time really since arriving (aside from stitching a boys head when he fell of a horse). We are lucky Waterton is such a sweet sweet dog, he let us hold him and Stefi stitched him up with the aid of a local anesthetic. However the next day we found he had chewed out all but 1 of his stitches. We went to catch him and put more in but due to some shiz going down that didn't happen. In the end he now has no stitches but the cut is still clean and healthy looking so it should heal a.ok.
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On one of the 4 nights Ana, Stefi and I were sleeping in hammocks and a tent because we were full of guests Stefi had the bright idea that she and I should go down and bathe at the river that night. So i warily agreed to said idea and off we went at I dunno about 640pm. We had 3/4 of a moon to light up the sandbank so could see pretty well and our torches hadn't spotted any nearby caiman eyes. I was a tad nervous at this point - it was really going against the grain bathing in a river, at night, that is full of caiman, especially after growing up in Australia where if you did that with Salties you wouldn't be there to finish washing your hair. We sang Piano Man (we have all been learning the lyrics religiously to keep ourselves amused) to keep back the nerves and the caiman. In the end it was a lot of fun but a little nerve wracking!
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On a very cool note Buddy caught a massive stingray the other morning! I don't know what species but it was about 46cm in diameter. We saw him thrashing about in the shallows and I guessed it was a stingray because he was struggling too much for it to be a fish. Boy was he chuffed about it, he came over dragging it making very excited, happy noises and wriggling his whole body and tail.
He then spent at least the next hour and a half gorging himself stupid on the thing. Then when he was full he'd go off for a little bit and then come back and have another nibble - he did this several times. He also proceeded to present us with the half eaten stingray, probably to share with us
Thankyou Buddy that is very sweet but um no thanks.
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Peace and happy travels to all :)
Next post will be about Stefi the Italian Bush Vet with Ana and I her technicians, neutering animals left, right and centre!
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